


Disintegration

by nokochaoli



Category: DCU (Comics), Green Lantern (Comics), The Flash (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety, Arguing, Foster Care, Gen, M/M, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-01-25 05:39:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12524212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nokochaoli/pseuds/nokochaoli
Summary: In which Barry had grown up with a foster family instead of Darryl Frye.





	Disintegration

**Author's Note:**

> I'd seen an offhand [ comment](http://boostle.tumblr.com/post/166598185230/wait-does-jl8-barry-have-a-foster-parent) from [boostle](http://boostle.tumblr.com/) about Barry possibly growing up in a foster family. And in between crunching numbers and writing emails at work, I couldn't not pull research articles about child development, put together a brief music playlist, and think way too long and hard about this.
> 
> I'm sorry. (A part of me is also not sorry.) And thank you to [Equiknoxous](http://equiknoxious.tumblr.com/) for listening to my eternally long AU backstory rant.
> 
> I'm hoping maybe I can write enough ideas to reveal the backstory naturally. Also, writing an unreliable narrator is fun.
> 
> ........I'm sorry.

“Magna.” Hal’s voice breaks the silence, his tone carrying a casual finality as if that were the only explanation needed.

“What?” Barry blinks in confusion, trying to parse which part he’d misunderstood. “Magma?” He turns the chair to face the monitor, scanning quickly for anything that might be amiss.

Hal’s chair swivels to face him more directly. “No. Magna cum laude.”

Barry pauses, giving Hal a sidelong glance as he tries to perform the massive amount of mental gymnastics that brought the conversation to this point. “... is a thing?”

Hal kicks his legs out, crossing them at the ankles. “It’s what you graduated with.”

Barry suddenly feels the joints in his arms, shoulders, and neck twinge, as if the severity of Hal’s sudden attention were acupuncture needles in his back. There’s a point to this. And even if he’s narrowed it down, the remaining ambiguity has set him on edge. “And?”

“How come you never said?”

“It’s not important.”

“Not important?” Hal’s voice is taking a quick turn towards incredulous. “It’s kind of a big deal.”

Barry breathes deep around the tension creeping up his spine. “It’s not summa.” He turns back towards the monitor, fiddling with the settings.

Hal scoffs. “Magna’s not enough?”

“What-?” That gets Barry to meet Hal’s gaze real quick. “No.”

“Then why?”

“It’s just not important.”

“It’s how you got a scholarship to grad school.”

“Which is also not important.” Barry frowns, his fingers digging into the leather of the arm of the chair. “Why are you-”

“You went to grad school.”

“All forensic scientists go to grad school.”

“Not on scholarship.”

With a kick of his heel, Barry turns the chair around to face Hal directly. “Just where is this going?”

“I found out from Bats.”

Barry blinks. Suddenly the entire room seems to have shrunk down to two points. He feels the muscle in his jaw clench as he turns over what Hal’s said in his mind. He’s torn, following two thoughts down two different rabbit trails at once. Why Hal is pressing for info and why Bruce is disclosing it. He tries to narrow it down to one, but he just ends up ambiguously lost somewhere between both. “Why is it even important?”

“Why isn’t it?”

“It’s just an addendum,” he shrugs, pivoting the chair nervously. “An extra line on a diploma.”

Hal refuses to lift his pointed gaze. “Which most people would be proud of.”

“But it’s not a big deal.”

“Again. I bring the case back to the scholarship.” Leaning forward in his chair, he uncrosses his ankles and leans his elbows on his knees.

Barry leans back in his own chair. “Why do you care?”

“Why don’t you?”

Barry lifts his hands, palms out in askance. “Can we please just…” he pauses to let out the breath he’d been holding in. He hates how shaky it sounds to his own ears. “... drop the Devil’s Advocate thing?”

The line of Hal’s shoulders stays eerily still, even as his head tilts slightly to the side.

“I just-” Barry takes a moment to figure out what he actually wanted to say. “Why are you upset?”

“Who said I was upset?”

“No one had to _say_ it.” Barry can practically see it engraved all over Hal’s body language.

Hal leans back in the chair. It’s only a fractionally minimal movement, but it’s enough for Barry to notice. “I just wanna know,” Hal replies airily.

“Know what?”

“Why you didn’t tell me.”

“As I keep saying. It’s not important.”

“So it’s not important to _share_ that sort of information with a friend.”

Barry certainly doesn’t like the sour edge that’s rising vaguely under the surface of Hal’s tone. He stands quickly from the chair and crosses the room, needing to get out from under Hal’s gaze. He runs a hand through his hair. “I didn’t realize the friendship application came with a complete background check.”

“Defensive much?” The words slice through the tension in the air.

Barry spins on his heels to look straight into Hal’s eyes. “I didn’t tell him.”

Hal freezes in place, looking like he was about to get out of his own chair and trail him.

“I haven’t told him,” Barry repeats, letting it sink into the thick atmospheric pressure. “So the next time you wanna go around discussing my permanent record with someone, maybe ask first.”

That’s when Hal practically leaps up from his chair, leaning forward and brow furrowed. “Hey, _I didn’t ask_.” The consonants reverberating harshly off the metallic walls of the Watchtower. “He just dropped that right into the conversation.”

Barry could feel the sound energy pass from the air, rend through his nerves, trailing all the way down to his very fingertips. He feels his muscles clench involuntarily. Even as the silence settles precariously, the entire room still feels electrically charged to him.

Hal breathes out long and slow, but the sound itself seems amplified in Barry’s ears. “Damnit, Bar.”

He hears a world of disappointment in those vowels, sinking into the undertow until the words collapse in upon themselves. And he can’t shake the feeling that he’s at the center of the whirlpool of disappointment. That there must have been some pre-designed script - a choreographed pantomime - and he’s missed each and every cue.

The tingling in his hands gradually gives way subtle tremors, vibrating in time with his diaphragm. “Sorry.” His own voice sounds so small, so foreign to his ears it’s almost drowned out by the rushing sound of his own pulse. He’s not even sure if Hal could’ve heard it.

“I’m not trying to start some sort of World War III argument here.” Hal’s shoulders fall as his hands sweep slowly outward. He takes a few steps forward, closing the distance.

A shudder breaks down Barry’s spine, trailing through his extremities and regrouping at his core. He immediately takes a step back, moving his hands out in front of him. “I’m sorry.” This time, the tone comes out too strong, like some sort of knee-jerk reaction.

Hal suddenly freezes where he’s standing. The only movement Barry can even detect is his breathing and the subtle micro-expressions flitting across his face. Eventually, even those still as Hal’s features settle into something just shy of determination, possibly encroaching resignation. “Why are _you_ sorry?”

He feels another shudder rip through him. This time, it stays, laying down and making a home as steady chills. “I don’t wanna argue either.”

“Bar.”

Hal fixes him with a piercing gaze he can’t stand to meet. So he stares at a scuff on the floor reflecting brightly in the light. “C-can we just… talk about something els-se?”

“Bar.” He’s aware of Hal moving closer, the change in proximity. But strangely enough, he can’t seem to make out the sound of Hal’s footsteps. It’s oddly disconcerting.

“Just… anything else?” Blue eyes flit from the floor to the consoles, trying to scan for anything that might spark some sort of idea for a conversation starter. They come to rest on Hal’s right shoulder when he’s finally stopped, just a little short of arm’s length away.

“Barry.” His tone is impossibly warm. It’s entirely too discongruous to how cold Barry feels, chills coming on hard.

“Please.” His shoulders fall, and he keeps his eyes trained on Hal’s right shoulder, even as the lines and colors start to blur. When he tries to breathe, he feels his throat constrict.

Hal’s left hand snakes up and around, coming to rest on the back of Barry’s neck. The warmth from just the palm of his hand radiates through Barry’s body instantaneously. Then, all at once, he tugs Barry forward. The sheer momentum of it has Barry stumbling into Hal’s space clumsily. Hal wastes no time wrapping his arm around Barry, left hand still on the back of Barry’s neck, pushing until his forehead connects with Hal’s left shoulder.

“ _Please_ ,” Barry whispers. When he blinks, warm tears fall and suddenly the lines and colors of objects come brightly back into focus.

“Sure.”


End file.
